Fascinating stuff, and I'm glad someone posted it. But I can never accept one-to-one interpretations as final and complete. Poetry and song doesn't work like that much of the time. An image starts from some literal thing, and then takes on all kinds of symbolic meanings.

You can make a collage out of pictures cut out of magazines - all the little bits would have an original meaning, from the picturte they were cut from - but the whole collage could have some all kinds of other meanings.

But can anyone answer this question? I've always thought that the voice that comes in on the final chorus in McLean's original recording sounds a whole lot like Pete Seeger, and I know Don McLean worked with him. Is it Pete?